We are protecting our endpoints, workstations, servers, and cloud workloads. This includes effective use of antivirus and detection and response capabilities.

I am working at Arab Open University, and we are using CrowdStrike Falcon as our security product.

The most beneficial part is the active response capability of the product. Being an EDR solution, it helps us identify attacks in real-time. The product runs in the background 24/7. The most interesting aspect is the behavior analysis functionality, which analyzes the behavior of any suspicious activity.

It identifies threats efficiently due to its built-in intelligence and AI capabilities, which has been extremely helpful for our organization.

Some features such as device control, firewall management, and file analysis are standalone products that we need to purchase separately. If these features came out of the box within the product, it would be much more beneficial for us. Other providers such as SentinelOne include these features in their base product.

We attended a CrowdStrike Falcon event where they discussed some shallow AI features, but we cannot see these in our panel yet. We work with different solutions such as Darktrace and SocRadar, where AI features are automatically displayed in our dashboards after release. However, for CrowdStrike Falcon, we cannot see these features.

Sometimes there are minor glitches, approximately 1% of the time. The biggest issue occurred when every computer worldwide experienced a blue screen. However, they solved the problems and introduced a new feature for channel updates. This has been much more beneficial, and while human errors can occur in any product, we cannot solely blame CrowdStrike Falcon for such incidents.

The customer service is good and efficient in terms of responding. They could improve by initiating calls for high-priority cases instead of just opening tickets. When we open a support ticket, they should call to discuss what happened and listen to our concerns.

Neutral

The setup is straightforward, and most of our integration is within the package. However, for the integration part, we need to purchase additional modules from CrowdStrike Falcon. If this functionality was included as a free standalone feature within the built-in solution, it would be more market competitive. Competitors such as SentinelOne and Microsoft Defender provide this functionality out of the box without additional charges.

We have not calculated the ROI extensively, as we typically only calculate it when there is dissatisfaction. On a scale of one to ten, the ROI would be five, which translates to approximately 60%.

We use the solution for Windows and non-Windows infrastructure. We have Falcon clients on all our machines.

We integrate with CyberArk, which includes DNA reporting, particularly for identifying old and ticket-based attacks. We’ve implemented this integration to receive risk-based scoring. Our strategy focuses on preventing privilege escalation, as our last major incident, NotPetya, resulted from this vulnerability. To address this, we’ve implemented measures through CyberArk and CrowdStrike.

When we encounter phishing attacks via email, we sandbox any reported items. Whenever a suspicious email is reported, we conduct sandboxing in CrowdStrike and block emails, domains, and IPs based on the resulting threat intelligence.

The most critical aspect is preventing privilege escalation, particularly for domain admins with the highest credentials. With our integration of CyberArk, passwords are never transmitted to the endpoint. Instead, a secure RDP file is created, and Falcon is used to prevent privilege escalation attempts.

As customers, we always update our systems whenever a new release is available, with clients connecting directly to the Internet for these updates. We have an agent who manages these updates on the clients, but as an organization, we don’t have control over them. CrowdStrike should assess the impact on endpoints before releasing such updates.

Our organization now seeks AI-based stock monitoring to prioritize thousands of alerts generated across various platforms. The AI integration is still in its early stages, so we would like to see Falcon develop tools that can integrate with multiple platforms and help identify the highest-priority alerts.

I have been using CrowdStrike Falcon Threat Intelligence since 2017. We are using the latest version of the solution.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

The integration part is very good. CrowdStrike collaborates with most security vendors, so it's very easy to get one platform for our risk factors across the enterprise.

40 thousand devices are using this solution. We get many alerts from Falcon, sometimes from end users and sometimes from Internet-facing servers.

I rate the solution's scalability a nine out of ten.

We struggle to get specialized resources from CrowdStrike in a few cases.

Neutral

CrowdStrike Falcon Black is an on-premise solution that was very complicated, so we faced performance issues. The main reason for the switch is the performance issues reported by multiple application owners.

Initially, we faced many challenges because we had to open ports from each of our subnets to Falcon, as it’s a SaaS solution. Each client needs to communicate with Falcon servers for threat intelligence. Due to the complexity of our network, we had to carefully consider all security aspects when opening the external communication ports to Falcon.

It took 25 to 30 days to deploy it completely.

We began with our Tier 0 servers, which had the most critical and highest privileges. After securing those, we moved on to Tier 1 and Tier 2 as we continued deployment. Our approach was to first address the highest risk factors across the enterprise and then gradually move on to securing endpoints like user desktops and laptops.

I rate the initial setup as seven out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy.

We took professional services from CrowdStrike, so it was done in-house with only two people: one from the execution team and one from the cybersecurity team.

When we track the annual priority cases, especially the security incidents, we have made many improvements. That is ROI in terms of tracking security incidents.

I rate the product’s pricing a six out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.

Most customer requirements focus on email security, so we’ve implemented Mimecast. CrowdStrike Falcon integrates with Mimecast, allowing us to provide advanced security beyond Office 365’s capabilities. With DMARC in place, Falcon helps us identify domains that pose a risk to the organization.

I advise you to look for customer feedback, and then they should also look for Gartner and other industry leaders so you get the ranking.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Our organization relies on CrowdStrike, a standalone endpoint security solution, to safeguard our bare-metal machines. CrowdStrike continuously monitors for threats on all endpoints. If it detects any suspicious activity, such as malware or malicious processes, it immediately alerts us for investigation. 

The malware protection is the most valuable feature of CrowdStrike Falcon.

The current database schema presents challenges and has potential for improvement.

The technical support response time can be improved.

There are a lot of false positives reported.

I have been using CrowdStrike Falcon for almost four years.

CrowdStrike Falcon is stable. 

CrowdStrike Falcon is scalable.

The technical support is good but the response time can be improved.

Positive

We previously used VMware Carbon Black Endpoint. CrowdStrike Falcon is more of an EDR solution.

I would rate CrowdStrike Falcon a seven out of ten.

The maintenance is straightforward.

CrowdStrike Falcon is deployed independently in our environment and we have 30 users.

While CrowdStrike Falcon offers valuable security tools for larger organizations with extensive infrastructure, its complexity might not be ideal for smaller businesses with limited IT resources.